


Love In Technicolor

by screamer



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Gore, Cyborg Jared, Cyborg Jensen, Cyborgs, Discussion of Abortion, Drug Use, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:53:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamer/pseuds/screamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My 2013 Reverse Bang piece, written for the beautiful art by mashimero. ~<a href="http://mashimero.livejournal.com/211170.html">Art Masterpost</a>~</p><p>Jared is a cyborg designed to kill. He may look human, he may have a human brain, but he's a machine. Jensen has been killing for his handler far longer than Jared, but he doesn't seem to agree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love In Technicolor

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a huge thanks to my artist, who not only inspired this story, but was simply wonderful to work with. Also, to the Reverse Bang mods for being so fantastic and patient. This was my first Reverse Bang and I had loads of fun. Last but not least, my friend Cory who read this fic at least three times, because I kept re-writing.
> 
> I must apologize to science and terminology as I abused both for the sake of fiction. Some of the quotes I used are actual things actual people have said/written. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which ones those are.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** This has never happened, probably wont, and the names, faces and places used in this fic are merely coincidental.

  


  
_For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term 'Cyborg'._  
\- Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline 

-1

The first thing Jared knows is the pressure that holds him immobile, suspended upright. 

He inhales and the flat, filtered air smells of heated electronics, latex and sterility. He opens his eyes. The light is bright and cool, leaving no shadows on the white partitions set up in an unbroken wall.

 _Ideation, male. Anatomy, male. Hardware fully functional._ His system is clearing checks at the speed of electrical pulse, and immediately the absence of unit specifications and protocol are a gaping hole setting alerts glowing in steady warning. Incomplete. Incomplete. 

Jared scans. There is no manufacturing data anywhere in his system. The scanable registration file to identify him as a cyborg and the boot that restricts certain wireless and physical activity are both missing. Carefully stipulated safety measures mandated by law, every cyborg in utility is required to have them.

The woman who steps in front of Jared is naturally aged into her forties and her hair an artificial jet-black. An array of silver and amber facial jewelry reflects light, at odds with the purple scrubs and gloved hands. 

“Okay, he’s a hundred percent.” Her voice is completely human, no hint of mechanization. Jared scans automatically. _Lei McCormick. Forty-six years old. Blood type O positive. Four technical degrees from three different universities. Criminal record in three countries._

Jared’s head is locked in place like the rest of him, but the acoustic echo tells him the space beyond the sectioning is vast and empty. Somewhere in the building industrial refrigeration units are running. A cacophony of information heaves beneath his consciousness. 

“Say hello, Jared.”

He licks over his lips. They taste like NH3. “Hello,” he says. His voice is low and smooth, completely unknown to his ears, but entirely familiar to his system.

“Ally, you want to code him here?”

At the edge of Jared’s vision there’s a tall, twig-thin blonde sitting on a metal stool, watching. She’s holding a tablet, readouts scrolling across the screen. 

Jared scans her, too. Her retinal identification says she’s Kara Lancaster, but the face and body are wrong. Optical surgery, sans medical records, indicates black market acquisition.

“No external markers,” the blonde says. Her voice is low and husky, strained.

“Gotcha.” McCormick taps her finger at a holograph screen.  
The blonde must be Jared’s handler. The external markers she doesn’t want are retinal scan and voice pattern. Someone who has a dead woman’s eyes is hiding, and if the eyes aren’t enough, she may have to alter her face and voice. The only required marker is brainwave, and only the original, living organ can code the cyborg.

Jared searches for his opinion on being handled by a criminal, but it doesn’t appear he has one. Laws are human constructs and Jared’s very existence flies in the face of current convention. Not only does he not have proper registration, but if his situational conjecture is correct, every piece of him was obtained illegally, all his organic components, his brain, hair and skin, trafficked material. Satellite information is telling Jared he’s currently located in a warehouse in an isolated portion of the Chihuahuan desert, east New Victory, also called NuVee. The only country that deals in more illegal cybernetics than New Victory is Russia, world capital of the sexborg.

And now the possibility having presented itself, Jared feels he must ask. Conventional cyborgs have no use for genitalia, and Jared is fully equipped.

“Am I sexborg?”

The blonde laughs.

“Mmm,” McCormick hums, “depends on what your handler likes.” Gloved fingers press here and there, and corresponding colors rise and fall on McCormick’s screen. When her gloved hand cups Jared’s penis and scrotum, it lingers.

“Right,” the blonde says. “I don’t fuck my equipment. I’ll leave that to the cysexual freaks.”

McCormick is stroking Jared’s arm. “Don’t worry, Jared, there’s still a chance you’ll get some action. You’ve got all the right parts, it’d be a shame not to use them.”

“I’m not sure if I have the inclination. My interface is incomplete.” Jared feels this needs to be pointed out.

But if he’s been designed for sex work there’s no reason for his interface and unit specifications to be missing. Prostitution is legal in all North American counties, and studies suggest that cyborgs make up over 30% of sex workers. Even though sexborgs are illegal in three out of four countries, Russian designed sexborgs are so sophisticated the customers can’t even tell the difference. Considering the prolific nature of the practice and the limited prosecution, a sexborg isn’t of great enough risk to warrant such caution, and therefore Jared isn’t a sexborg.

He considers this new self-awareness.

“God, he talks a lot, doesn’t he?” the blonde woman says. 

McCormick shrugs one shoulder. “He’s still processing, and the human part of his brain tends towards verbalizing questions. If it’s a problem we can work on programming, or even go back in and try to trim a bit more, but that’s risky at this stage.” 

“I paid a fucking fortune for that brain, you leave it alone,” the blonde woman says.  
McCormick laughs, flashing a tongue stud. “And it’s worth every ounce, I promise. Ready to code?”

“Lock off,” the blonde says, and all of Jared’s joints unstick. He turns his head, takes in the stainless steel tables and surgical lamps arranged inside the white-curtained circle. The platform that’s restraining him detaches and Jared drops a few inches, bare feet connecting with concrete. 19 degrees celsius. The sensation registers without discomfort.

McCormick is watching Jared with an expression of delight. Her heart rate is slightly elevated, her pupils dilated. Excitement and pleasure. The blonde - Ally, Jared’s handler - looks distracted, and her fingers tremble in their grip on her tablet. Stressed, impatient, chemically imbalanced. “Stand down,” she says.

Jared doesn’t even feel the override, just the command taking over his body, moving his legs, planting his feet, arms held to his sides. It seems unremarkable that his very first steps are not his own.

  
_“The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind.”_ – James D. Watson, Discovering the Brain, 1992

-2

The rest of the codes run under the constant touch of Jared’s new handler. Like fingertips on skin, the awareness is painless but insistent. Eventually, Jared supposes he will become so accustom to it, he no longer notices. 

McCormick watches everything Jared does, eyes darting between her screen and roving over Jared’s body. “He’s practically undetectable. They’d have to dissect him to catch anything.”

“I’ve already paid you, you don’t need to pitch him to me.”

“Let a girl boast a bit. After five months I’m kind of attached to him.”

McCormick hands Jared a pair of cotton scrub pants and a t-shirt. She grins at his thank you. His handler watches him dress, tension in her jaw and the line of her brows. 

“Thanks for the business. Too bad I wont be around for tuneups,” McCormick says. “Got to tear this shit down tonight.”

Ally nods, but doesn’t speak, and when she collets her tablet and satchel and turns to go, Jared follows.

A blackout transport and a luxury sedan are parked at the far end of the warehouse in front of huge rolling doors, shut against the midday heat. Ally taps at her tablet and the silver Jaguar starts with a growl, both doors gliding open. “Get in.”

Jared gets in, settles back as the harness slides over his chest and locks. 

“Laplay Lake house,” his handler says, and the car starts backing out through the rising bay doors. 

Outside the desert stretches pale and unbroken on all sides, heat waves turning the distant mountains a vague purple. Jared knows this terrain, the cacti, the dry smell of the soil like he’s lived here for a human lifetime.

“What’s at Laplay Lake?”

“Don’t worry about it,” his handler says. She’s digging in her satchel, comes up with a small metal case. Her hands shake as she pops it open, takes out a plastic-wrapped syringe and an unmarked bottle of silver liquid. 

Jared watches her draw a load into the syringe. Unsteady hands, dry skin, rough voice, sensitivity to light - dermontil. His handler is an addict. Not a very positive beginning. Jared would tell her the dangers of this habit, but he knows she is not interested in the information. So instead he repeats, “I don’t think my interface is complete.” 

His handler looks over at him, assessing. “It will be when you sync with Jensen. He has everything you’re missing. We don’t keep copies of that stuff.”

Jensen must be cyborg. No copies means the information is sensitive and likely incriminating.

His handler ties off one arm, finds a vein with practiced ease and slides the needle in. “He’s going to be your partner.”

She pulls the needle out with a sigh, drops it into the disposal under the dash, then reclines her seat, leaning back, eyes closed. “I don’t want you to power down till I’ve installed everything, so just sit there and don’t talk. Process shit. We have a five hour drive, and I’m fucking exhausted.”

Jared sits and doesn’t talk. There is practically no road noise inside the car, and his handler’s breathing is loud and persistent in the quiet. Outside the tinted window, the grey blur of desert runs past. 

Jared flips open the passenger seat mirror, white light clicking on to illuminate a short, wide nose, arched brows, hollows under high cheek bones, angled eyes in a starburst of color. His designer spent a great deal of time and effort making him look human. It’s work with attention to natural detail, the kind of face where a lot of time and money has been invested. Jared frowns, then smiles wide and bright and decides he has no attachment to the particular arrangement of features. Tactically speaking, it’s an advantage; studies show humans are easier to manipulate when they are experiencing physical attraction.

Jared sits back. The dash display says they have just passed the off ramp for White Palisade, New Victory. 1.2 thousand kilometers to Laplay Lake.

__**cy·sex·u·al**  
adjective  
1\. sexually attracted to cybernetic systems  
noun  
1\. a person who is sexually attracted to cyborgs 

-3

Laplay Lake is gold under the setting sun, light winking on glass and metal from the houses spaced along the shore, half hidden in the trees.

The car turns up the drive of an oversized lodge, glass and rough-cut timber, tucked away on a gentle hillside. The driveway leads into an underground garage, the door already rolling open as they arrive. Lights set in the walls glow to full brightness, showing a red cab, personal aeronautic transport, already parked inside. 

Jared’s handler groans and curses as the car eases to a stop and the engine shuts off. A second later, both doors open, and she practically falls out, stumbling around the back to retrieve a hard-body briefcase. 

“C’mon,” she says, already walking towards stairs leading up. 

They pass through a foyer, into a combined kitchen and dining room. Towards the front of the house the living room overlooks the lake through a wall of tinted glass. 

The room has two occupants, human male, human female. Jared scans instinctively. The man, ( _Davin Desmond, twenty-eight, no permanent residence, no criminal record, no known employment_ ) is lying on a couch reading a manga. The woman is staring into empty air, her eyes reacting to whatever she’s seeing on her retinal screens, completely absorbed. Judging by her handset, some kind of game.

“Everything go okay?” the man, Davin, asks. 

“Yeah, just hate the drive,” Jared’s handler says. “Did the job call yet?”

“Last night. He’s waiting with Ben. Says he’ll give us the mission files in person.”

Ally drops her luggage and collapses onto one of the couches. “The guy’s one step above a terrorist, and he goes around with both hands over his ass. Oh fucking joy.”

The girl playing the game makes a growling sound and tosses the controller to one side. She blinks twice and taps her ear piece off, glancing around the room. Her gaze stops at Jared and she looks him up and down as her head tilts slightly, her tongue moving over her lower teeth. “God, Ally, who designed him? I want one. Sexy, sexy.” 

“Put a cork in it Lav, he’s not for you,” says Jared’s handler.

Jared looks between his handler and the girl. ( _Lavender Rizzoli, 25, reported deceased in an explosion last year. Juvenile record, sealed._ ) Even with the distance Jared can feel the rise of her body temperature. She even smells aroused. Humans can’t hide anything.

“I don’t know at what level I am capable of performing sexually,” he says, to be helpful. “I don’t have access to my specs and my interface is still incomplete.”

Lavender smiles. “Mmmm-mmm, that voice.”

“Oh, fuck,” Ally says, like she just remembered something. “Davin, Jared needs a sync.”

“Yeah, okay.” Davin gets up, yawns, and shuffles out of the room. 

“Fuck this job,” Ally says. “Worst fucking timing ever.”

Lavender crawls off her couch and towards Jared. She’s just eight centimeters shorter than he is and can almost look him in the eye. She grips Jared’s bicep with one hand, slides her palm down to his wrist. Her fingers are warm and moist.

“My god, his eyes are unreal,” she says, leaning in. Jared glances at his handler, but she’s watching with absent boredom. Maybe she does intend to use Jared as a sexborg after all. 

“You’re unusually horny. Miss your annual fuck trip to doll land?”

Doll Land is the worlds largest sex fair, Russian owned and operated, populated entirely by sexborgs. Lavender smirks at Ally’s comment, not taking her eyes off Jared. Her eyebrows are tattoos with intricate lace pattern. “Never too much of a good thing,”she says.

“Link’s up,” Davin says as he reenters the room. Right behind him follows a man with eyes like green glass. His feet are bare under the frayed hems of his jeans and his thick, short hair is mussed. His face is too perfect to pass as a natural human. Jared’s designer used subtle irregularities to trick the eye, but this man’s every feature is flawless.

Jared scans, scans again. 

The man’s eyes narrow. “You done?”

Jared meets the other cyborg’s gaze. No external identification, no scanable file. It’s a dead read. Just like Jared. 

“My apologies. You must be Jensen.”

Jensen looks at Jared, but he isn’t scanning. He doesn’t answer. 

Without warning, the files drop and immediately Jared’s system is processing thousands of hours of visual, dozens of petabyte of observation and analysis. Every muscular contraction, every second of sensation is burrowing into Jared’s system.

It’s all Jensen.

  
_“The brain presents two seemingly irreconcilable aspects: It is a material body, exhibiting all the physical properties of matter, and it possesses a set of faculties and attributes, collectively called mind, that are not found in any other physical system.”_ – Erich Harth, Windows on the Mind

-4

Leaning over a woman spread out on the leather seat of a boat, water rocking the deck under his feet, sea salt in the air. The woman’s looking up at him, sultry, inviting, and then his hands are around her neck. Her head pops off like a cheap doll. She doesn’t even have time to stop smiling. 

A man stepping into a car, flanked by cyborg bodyguards, identification clear in their electric eyes and tattooed hands. Jensen doesn’t even pause, darting between the guards at inhuman speed. One, two, three exploding rounds, bursting the target’s skull like a bad egg. 

The only true kill is a brain kill.

There’s another cyborg with Jensen. Janna. She’s handled by Ally. 

Rooftop. A baby screaming in the corner of a humid, decaying apartment. The three adults seated around a tiny card table leap to their feet when Jensen and Janna swing through the windows. 

_“Target acquired.”_

A river full of toy boats. Kids running, happy shrieking. People grouped, watching. Janna is five people deep in the crowd, blending perfectly. Her call comes inlink, _“Target acquired.”_

Jensen is eating a cherry ice cream pop. The air around him smells like diesel and rotting river water. In-sun temperatures are 40 degrees Celsius so Jensen is sweating even though he can regulate his body temperature just fine without it.

Janna doesn’t look over, eyes hidden behind sunglasses that are just costuming. “Why are you even eating that? It’s not like you need it.”

“I don’t need to do a lot of things.”

Artificial chill, blowing from overhead vents. An old man in a silk suit, eyes outlined in blue tattoo. “Show me something to make me reconsider,” he says, pale tongue running over dry, wrinkled lips. 

Jensen’s reaching for his belt, fingers working the buckle open.

Fresh blood is slick as oil, the natural insides of a human too soft and slippery for gaining a hold. Jensen’s hand, wrist deep in intestines, closes around fragile vertebrae. It’s as easy as pulling a shoe string. The body folds like an accordion.  
 _“Target down.”_

Janna is ahead, taking the narrow stairs two at a time. The alarm was silent, triggered by a scanner four floors below. The entire building has locked down, the lifts frozen, the doors armed. The stairwell is dim, emergency lights tinting it in red. Janna jerks, a second’s spasm, and Jensen passes her even as Ally’s voice comes incom, _“Fucking hell. Hack on Janna.”_

The electric current running through the locked door of the top floor pent house has enough voltage to destroy Jensen’s entire system, fry his brain, shrivel his skin. Centimeters from the metal slab, he can feel the crackling pulse.

His handler’s voice comes incom: _“Ben’s forty seconds out. Jensen, hold position.”_

Forty seconds to disarm the door. Four to locate and eliminate the target.

Janna’s there, her movements human-slow. Her system is conserving energy, focusing on defense. Security must be bearing down hard, throwing out everything they have.

Fifteen seconds. 

Jensen scans past the walls. Two human life forms, one cyborg, reading with a registered serial. Bodyguard, last year’s model.

Like a thin knife into soft flesh, Jensen slips into the cyborg’s system. Alarms flare up, and the system starts security shutdown, but it’s too late. It takes only seconds for Jensen to rip the memory, every piece of pertinent information. As he pulls out, Jensen fires out a barrage of conflicting commands. It’s the surest way to destroy both the organic material and the machine, the human brain and its many mechanical enhancements that make up a cyborg’s command center. 

Overload. Temperature regulation offline. 

Five seconds.

Thick, discolored fluid starts running from the cyborg’s eyes, nose, pouring from its ears. Brain matter explodes from its mouth in a violent cough.

It’s almost like a crude deconstruction.

The same switch in Janna’s head the hack is working to get past. 

The lock-down goes up, the electrical current snapping off, every door in the building swinging open. Jensen wrenches out of the blanked cyborg, already moving, too fast for the natural human eye to follow. 

The organic heat sources are both in the bedroom. Richard Carlyle, too old, too rich, and Rebecca Turney, twenty years younger, as much machine as human with her electric lavender eyes, so wide now, full lips opening in a scream.  
Jensen hates screaming. He snaps her neck first, tearing through the spinal cord.

_“Target down.”_

_“Copy that. Hostile units en route to your location,”_ Davin says.

 _“Copy,”_ Jensen acknowledges.

In the foyer Janna is leaning against the wall, a fine tremor running through her body. The hack has gone deep enough that she’s losing motor control. 

_“Janna,”_ Jensen says inlink. Her eyes seek him out, overly bright.

_“Jensen, proceed to the randevú point.”_

Janna’s chest heaves, her over-worked system desperate for oxygen. Jensen stands, frozen, eyes locked. He can lift over five metric tons; skin over a graphene chassis is light. 

_“Janna’s deconstruction is already counting. Follow protocol.”_

Janna can’t hear Davin, or even her own handler, Ally. Links to command are cut the moment the threat becomes decisive and deconstruction is triggered. 

Some whisper of Jensen’s thoughts may slip over their link. Janna closes her eyes and breathes out. It’s resignation. 

There’s nothing more to do. Jensen follows protocol.

  
**CLEARLINE PRESS** Jul 14, 2112  


_Lindsae Carr is pregnant for the thirteenth time, but she’s never been a mother. Carr is what’s known as a professional aborter. One of the thousands of young women who make their living through the process, Carr has induced eleven of her thirteen pregnancies with the intention of aborting near term and selling the fetus’ remains._

_“I can get about twenty thousand for each one,” Carr says. “Sometime I have to carry them longer, just to make sure they can use it, but then I get paid more.”_

_For lower income households, the extra money is a boon. But for Carr, it’s more than just money._

_“I wouldn’t have done this, I wouldn’t have done this just for the money, you know? Like, maybe once. But I feel like I’m donating towards a the future. Cyborgs are important, we need that.”_

_Cybernetics laboratories currently purchase one third of all fetal material in North America, but due to complications in incubation, only 40% of all harvested material is usable._  


-5

Jared surfaces from installation as the information settles in, fills the gaps, curls into his synthetic muscle and slides under his organic skin. His body knows every movement like they’re his own memories instead of leeched from Jensen. It’s everything he was missing.

Across the room, Jensen is watching him, not a single thing Jared can read from the other cyborg’s expression. There’s a soft echo in Jared’s mind, a space he feels Jensen at the other end of. The link between them is open, but empty, like a dropbox waiting for material. 

_“Hello, I’m Jared,”_ Jared tries. He knows the etiquette for a thousand different human cultures and situations, but nothing about addressing a fellow cyborg. 

_“Sync doesn’t make us friends so stay out of my fucking head.”_ Jensen’s face is perfectly impassive. 

Clearly there is less protocol than Jared would have suspected.

“I love it when they get all crazy killer,” Lavedner says, watching Jared like she can see inside his head.

“Leave my equipment alone,” Ally says, and Lavender lifts her middle finger, her other hand stroking over Jared’s chest as she steps around him.

“I’m breaking out the tequila and if you bitches want some you better get it now.”

“Stand down,” Ally says, and Jared’s body locks. 

Davin yawns, looks between Jared and Jensen then echos, “Stand down.” He picks up his manga and leaves the room. 

From the kitchen Lavender laughs. Jared could listen to every word, every breath, every heartbeat of the three humans in the other room if he wanted to. 

Instead, he gives conversation another try. A persistent curiosity is nibbling at his mind. _“Do I have it too?”_

The only movement Jensen makes is the rise and fall of his chest, same as Jared. Jared can take in oxygen without any external movement, but like his skin and saliva and fingernails, it’s all to make him appear human. 

Jensen doesn’t respond for a long moment. Glass shatters in the kitchen. The smell of alcohol rises in the air.

_“The deconstruction trigger? I’m gonna say yes.”_

That makes sense. Jared now contains a massive amounts of highly sensitive information. His handler could be identified by her markers in his code, but without that information he’s untraceable, just an expensive body.

 _“You don’t seem too worried about it.”_ There’s no inflection to the inlink conversation. Jared isn’t sure what nuance to put to Jensen’s responses, but he feels Jensen’s words cannot be taken at face value. With human’s there are tells, ways to read them. Not with another cyborg.

Of course Jared doesn’t want to blank, his archipallium’s sense of self-preservation hasn’t been completely trimmed away, but the concept of a deconstruction trigger agrees with his system’s need for flawless order and security. _“It’s a necessary failsafe,”_ he says after a moment. It’s not like death. Cyborgs don’t die, they’re never alive.

But Jensen seemed to appreciate Janna, and she was deconstructed. Jared isn’t sure what one says to another cyborg in this instance, so he stays silent. 

Three minutes before nine o’clock, he hears Davin and Ally leave the kitchen for separate bedrooms. Lavender stays, drinking and listening to music Jared can hear buzzing through her earpiece. In the shadowed room Jensen’s eyes are bright, and the open link is a constant presence in Jared’s consciousness, the same as Ally’s marker. 

Three a.m. and Jared feels a resonance in Ally’s markers. A few minutes later she’s shuffling through the kitchen, steam rising from the mug of coffee she has cradled in both hands. 

“Lock off.”

Jared’s body comes back under his control and he turns towards his handler. She’s assessing him, pale eyes narrowed. She inhales, an inverted sigh, and takes another swallow of coffee. 

“Okay, let’s get you packed in. We have to be in Westland before nine.”

They walk back through the kitchen, down to the garage. Lavender is loading armored refrigerator cases into the red cab, her music still playing in a muted concert. Inside the cramped cargo space there are four impressions in the floor, half a meter deep, roughly the size and shape of a curled body. 

Lavender locks the last case in place. “Davin?” she asks, too loud. 

“Go kick him or something,” Ally says and Lavender shrugs. 

“I’m getting coffee and then we should leave.” She jogs back towards the stairs, ducking aside when the door opens and Davin’s there with Jensen behind him. Jensen’s wearing boots, half unlaced, and a different t-shirt. Jared hadn’t considered clothing. He’s still wearing the scrubs from the warehouse in New Victory. 

“This everything?” Davin asks. 

“Unless you have more.” Ally makes a motion to indicate Jared should get up into the cargo hold and Jared jumps up into the close space. 

“Sent our stuff with Ben.” Davin seems to include Jensen in that. “Lav wouldn’t let him touch anything, though.”

“Paranoid bitch,” Ally says. 

The door at the top of the stairs slams and Lavender comes thumping down. “Fuck you, Al. Someone could take out a whole fucking country with this stuff.” 

The close space is suddenly filled with Jensen as the other cyborg jumps lightly up into the cargo space. Jared moves aside to accommodate him, but Jensen ignores him, settles into one of the impressions, his humanoid body unnatural with its cyborg flexibility. 

“Power down,” Davin says. Handlers don’t need to use verbal commands, they can inlink directly to their cyborg. Jared wonders why these handlers seem to prefer speaking aloud. 

Jensen goes still in his case, eyes closed, his breathing slowing to undetectable. In Jared’s head, their link is muted, a soft grey nothing. Jensen’s off line. A thin, clear cover rolls across the recess, closing Jensen in. Blue and green readouts light up on the cover’s surface, showing Jensen’s oxygen levels and brain activity. His system has started some kind of defragmentation. 

“Waiting for something?” Ally says. 

For the briefest of moments, Jared hesitates, a strange distress curling up in his mind. This is the first time he will be insensate since his awakening. For an instant, Jared thinks of blanking.

But the next second Jared is folding, curling into the close, padded space, cool and scentless. 

The last thing he knows is the soft depression where his link to Jensen waits to be woken.

  
_Whole companies are now run by artificial intelligence, but even the most sophisticated program is still incapable of duplicating the animal sixth sense._ \- R.H. Hanby, HRN geneticist

\- 6

Powerdown is a new experience for Jared. Everything is new for him, really, but it’s sensation that is the most unexpected. The information that makes up the world is already his. But personal experience is different. 

Powerdown is like a waking sleep. Jared lies curled in his case, detached from awareness. In this state he has no ability to react, even in his thoughts, so it isn’t till Ally voices him back online that Jared can even form this opinion. After some consideration, he decides that wont be how blanking feels, but there is an unhappy curl of . . . something, somewhere in the back of his mind. Perhaps his programming doesn’t like the loss of control.

 _“Does that happen often?”_ he asks Jensen. They’ve arrived in Aspen, a resort city in Westland Republic. The red cab is parked on a landing pad in the middle of a rooftop garden. It has recently rained, and the smell of wet gravel and soil fills the air. The distant hum of city traffic is usurped by suburban birdsong.

Jensen doesn’t look at him and his voice is flat when he replies verbally, “Mostly for travel. It’s a good time for maintenance.”

They follow the handlers inside while Lavender unloads her cases. A tall, stocky man meets them at the upstairs door. _Benjamin Handler, thirty-two, software developer, twice divorded. No current address, no current employment._

“The job’s getting antsy,” he says to Davin and Ally in lieu of greeting. 

Ally makes a grumbling noise and shoulders past him, down the stairs.

“Things okay?” Benjamin asks. 

“Bad timing,” Davin says. 

“Oh.” Benjamin’s gaze settles on Jared. 

There’s a moment of silence where the sound of Ally’s footsteps thumping down the stairs can be heard. Some sense, a kind of whisper, comes across Jared’s link. When he looks over, Jensen catches his glance and quirks an eyebrow in question. 

“You all can offer to help any time now,” Lavender yells from outside. 

By the time they’ve hauled the cases down to the ground floor, Ally has already disappeared. Washroom down the hall, Jared’s senses tell him. There’s something else, lighting up a corner of his awareness, and when a tall, pale man emerges from the open livingroom, Jared scans automatically. 

There’s no file, no name. The man’s legs, left arm, vision center, heart and kidneys are all fully mechanized. Combat victim. Probably ex-military. Bodyguard, Jared decides.

“Is this all of your group?” the man asks. 

“All but one,” Benjamin says. 

The pale man looks at them all with his unblinking eyes. “Mr. Canton is waiting.”

Benjamin looks at Davin and Lavender. “Breakfast?”

There’s breakfast already laid out on the diningroom table, and a short, stocky man sitting at one end, ignoring a plate of eggs benedict in favor of watching his tablet screen. 

“Mr. Canton, meet Lavender, Davin. Guys, the job.”

Thane Canton has a frustrated kind of intensity that charges the air around him. He smiles thinly at the introduction. “Aren’t you missing a member?”

“She’s just in the ladies room.”  
No one pays attention to Jared or Jensen, and Jensen is already moving off, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Jared takes a chair, waits for something to happen.

When Ally joins them everyone is eating sugar-dusted pastries and drinking coffee. Jared isn’t eating, but he knows what everything tastes like already. All the scents and flavors are swimming around in his information bank with a million other things.

Jensen is sitting with his chair tilted away from the table, eating a strawberry doughnut, not looking at anyone. If it was a human he was observing Jared would interpret it as boredom or inattention, but he doesn’t know what it means on Jensen, on a cyborg.

“My main job here is to make sure you don’t fuck this up,” Thane says as an opening. “We want to draw as little attention as possible, so that means low body count. You have one target, and one target only.” He spins a disposable thumb drive into the middle of the table. “Your mission files.”

Ally reaches out an unsteady hand and presses the unlock on the drive. Jared can read the fresh dose of dermontil swimming through her blood. 

All the humans at the table look down at their tablets and Jensen pauses in his eating. Jared follows suit, reaches out and pulls the files in. 

_Karl Atmadja, 37, dark hair, olive skin, light eyes. Lately employed by Linnd & Trainer Genetics, headquartered in the Eastern Confederation. Disappeared three weeks ago._  
Every identifying feature of the target has been provided, but the only one Jared needs is his brainwave pattern. They say a dog never forgets a scent; a cyborg never loses a wave pattern. Once it has yours, you will never be safe again. 

Benjamin flicks a holograph screen into the middle of the table. “Mr. Canton came with eyes on the target, and I’ve confirmed. Currently, the target is located in the CWB compound, west side of the city. Has been for about six days.”

“What’s he waiting for?” Lavender pokes at the screen, spinning the compound model around. It’s 1.15 square miles of lightly wooded ground, the main building a massive pentagram with a central courtyard. “And why the fuck are religious nuts like the CWB giving him asylum?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Thane says.

Lavender makes a snorting sound. “What’d this guy do, steal a clone? Leak a patent? 

Thane’s eyes narrow. “A certain measure of caution is advisable, for both our sakes. I don’t need to remind you you’re breaking as least ten international laws just with the cyborgs.”

“And you’re here in person because if this guy doesn’t get topped, it’s your head on the chopping block,” Ally says. “Let’s not pretend to give a fuck about cy laws.”

Thane’s bodyguard makes a shuffling movement, like he’s reminding everyone he’s still there, ready to tear off limbs and crush bones.  
“This is a time sensitive mission,” Thane says, speaking slowly, his tone patronizing. “The Universe Federation Ethics Committee is convening tomorrow morning, and there is a good chance your target plans to use one of the representatives as a free ride off continent. If he is accepted into one if their entourages, your job becomes about five thousand times harder. You’ll have –”

“Calm the fuck down,” Ally sighs. “We know how to do our job, okay?”

“Can we all act like professionals?” Benjy says, loudly, and Jared catches the slight, amused curl of Jensen’s mouth before he takes another bite of doughnut. 

Thane looks around the table with narrowed eyes, face flushed. Jared thinks that was probably more than he wanted to reveal, though it could easily have been inferred. It’s fairly obvious Thane is working for Linnd & Trainer, and the fact that he’s taking the risk of direct contact and extended association means this job is extremely important. Guiltless entities don’t hire assassins. Whatever Karl Atmadja did to warrant death had to be benign in comparison to the sins of his former employer. 

In Jared’s head, the profile of the target show a serious man with an expression of perpetual inner conflict. He was a simple sort of person, focused on his job, moderately generous, socially moral. Jared feels not even a flicker of distaste at the idea of pulverizing his brain. 

The realization that he is completely amoral is not a revelation for Jared, more a casual acknowledgment, but inexplicably it has him reaching for his link with Jensen. He doesn’t say anything, but Jensen must feel something. He looks over at Jared, eyes opaque, sunlight catching his thick lashes, lighting them up. 

“Okay, security?” Davin says. “The compound has a system that picks up even minor prosthetics. Up side, no other borgs, downside, very narrow window for invisibility.”

“It’s a tight system.” Benjamin runs a hand through his thick hair. “It’s never seen something like the Js though. Optimistically, they’ll have three minutes.”

Lavender taps the table twice with a fingernail. “Then we trip the system externally, right before it catches them. Diversionary gate crash via drone,” she grins.

“Three minutes is plenty of time,” Jensen says to no one in particular, but he’s looking at Jared.

  
_“The human brain is not fully filled in till the age of twenty-five. While it is possible to incubate a human brain from infancy to adulthood and retain full function, there is no replacement for the nurturing environment of the human body. With this in mind, a future where cyborgs are grown rather than recycled does seem probable.”_ – Michael Westrow, CEO of Habber Cybernetics

-7

Ally leaves the rest of the team still in the dining room, motioning Jared to follow. She leads him upstairs, down a narrow hall to what was intended as a bedroom but now acts as a entertainment center. She hauls a case into the middle of the floor and flips it open. “Change into something,” she says, and leaves. Jared had forgotten he was still wearing scrubs. Clothing is such an inconsequential thing. 

He pulls out the first articles that come to hand. If he need to dress for any occasion, Jared is capable of doing so flawlessly, but his system does not appear to have any artistic interest in fashion. He strips off the thin, shapeless cotton and dresses. The jeans he pulls on fit perfectly, and it’s a familiar sensation, but Jared has never worn jean, and the memory is not his own. It’s Jensens. The oddity of that slides around Jared’s mind for a moment before it settles.

When he returns to the ground floor, the other humans are gone, and Lavender is spreading her cases across the livingroom floor, unpacking and assembling what looks like some kind of light drone. Jared goes to find Jensen. 

The soft pull of their link guides him to the kitchen where Jensen is rummaging through the refrigerator. He doesn’t turn or acknowledge when Jared settles his hip into the counter edge to watch. Jensen arranges foodstuff on the marble counter top, pulls up a rack of knives and starts peeling and dicing. He’s halfway through when his eyes flicker over Jared, then linger, assessing. 

“You just going to stand there?”

Jared shrugs, an imitation of Jensen’s human body language. “I have nothing to do.”

Jensen makes an odd face, half scowl, half something else. He spins a cutting sheet across the counter, knocking it against Jared’s hip. “Then do something. I know you can use a knife.”  
The last part Jensen says with a sharp undertone. Jared isn’t sure what it means, so he picks up a knife and sets to slicing the packaged pieces of raw Greater Sage-Grouse into thin strips. 

Jensen doesn’t say anything else as they work, and Jared doesn’t try to communicate inlink. The other cyborg’s presence is comfortable, a familiarity that’s soothing even with the evident resentment. Jared suspects it has something to do with the sync, how parts of him are now a copy of Jensen. 

No one else comes into the kitchen and the watery sunlight slides around the floor to ceiling windows as Jared watches Jensen flambé rum-soaked pears and paper-thin slices of meat. When he takes out the plates, he fills two, leaving one in front of Jared before moving over to the table by the window. 

Jared sits on the counter, picks up his fork and takes a careful mouthful. 

Even though he’s capable of all human functions including eating, he doesn’t need to. His organic materials are supplied with nutrition and hormones via a timed release pack. Jared knows taste and scent like an immense catalogue. It’s nothing like eating real food.

“This is good,” Jared says. He hadn’t actually expected the pleasure of chewing and swallowing, the slow acquaintance with taste and texture. It seemed a tedious thing, but the very action is releasing some kind of pleasure response. 

Jensen smirks down at his plate. “Fuck, yeah. Oldest comfort measure in existence.” 

Jensen is putting his tableware in the washer when Lavender walks in. 

“That smells glorious. Got any left?”

Jensen nods towards the stove. “It’s cold,” he says.

“I’m not picky, haute cuisine chef.” 

Jensen doesn’t respond, just leaves. Jared follows the faint sense of his progress through the house. 

Lavender jumps up to sit on the counter beside Jared, her too-warm body close. “So fucking good,” she moans around a mouthful of food. “We need more jobs or Davin needs to have Jen-Jen cook like this all the time.” 

“Jensen doesn’t usually cook?” 

“Just before a job. Like some kind of ritual meal,” Lavender laughs. “It’s weird, but Jensen’s pretty old in cy years, and you guys tend to get quirky after a while.” She glances up a Jared. “No offense. You probably have a better organics than Jen-Jen, so maybe it’ll take longer.” She reaches out to grip Jared’s bare arm, like she’s testing the theory. 

Jared sets his plate down. “What do you mean I have better organics?”

“I think Davin got Jensen from Russian designers. It’s why he’s so pretty and perfect. They all have sexborgs on the mind,” Lavender grins and removes her hand from Jared to spear another piece of fruit and meat off her plate.

“Ally sourced you from somewhere on continent, and I know it wasn’t recycled,” Lavender uses one hand to make air quotes around the word, “material. Tank brain or trafficked.”

Jared watches Lavender scrape her plate clean, trying to catch what she’s alluding to. The brains of aborted fetuses, incubated to adulthood, are the only legal material for cyborg designers, but trafficked organs are a huge market, thriving in countries like New Victory. Jared had supposed the latter. He hasn’t considered a third option, hadn’t any reason to think there would be one.

“So where did my material come from?”

Lavender grimaces. “Not going to speculate on that. This world was fucking crazy long before I was born and it’s going to be crazy after I’m gone. I’m just here for the ride.” 

She jumps off the counter and strolls from the kitchen. “Good luck tonight, sexy.”

  
_“As cybernetics grow more advanced, and humans more mechanized, there will soon come a time when the only thing that separates us from them is a serial number. And at that time, slavery will be reborn.”_ \- Dr. Jan Fukui, speaking before the Universe Federation Ethics Committee, 2123

-8

Personal vehicles draw attention. They take the shuttle into the city. 

Even at this time of night, nearly ten o’clock, the carriage is mostly full. Jensen leans against the glass, ignoring the few empty seats, and Jared stands beside him. This close Jared call smell what little scent Jensen has, and it smells mostly human., but with the slightest hint of metal and chemical around the edges.

“Stop smelling me.”

Jared looks away, doesn’t acknowledge. He can’t help the curiosity. Jensen’s relatable like nothing else is, his skin unmarked and a head full of killing. Cyborgs have rules to follow, but Jared and Jensen break all of them. 

The shuttle moves into a curve and Jared leans against the window. When Jensen’s eyes meet his in the reflection, Jared asks inlink, _“You were designed in Russia?”_ His conversation with Lavender is still in his head, stuck like a wind-blown leaf.

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Your memory’s been redacted.”_

Jensen doesn’t answer.

_“Why were you edited?”_

_“To improve performance.”_

Jared has no way of knowing what Jensen is thinking, but his response sounds like sarcasm.  
What they say over their link isn’t transmitting to their handlers, but everything is accessible if they want it. Jared wonders if Ally will review his mission files. Somehow he doesn’t think so. Her drug-soaked body is too distracted with eating itself alive.

Jensen looks out the window, though there’s nothing to see, and Jared watches Jensen till they reach the station.

Once they leave the shuttle, Jensen changes. His eyes are bright with interest and the reflexive, unconscious movements humans constantly make take up residence in his frame. His fingers are restless, his arms swing. He wastes steps and momentum, and when he catches Jared watching, he shoots him a grin. Jensen looks completely human, and now the impossible perfection of his face isn’t unnatural, it’s beautiful. 

“You look nervous. Relax Jared, it’s just a date.” 

“Right,” Jared says. He doesn’t look nervous. He has perfect control of every muscle in his body, but apparently Jensen likes acting as much as he likes using his voice, so Jared smiles, relaxes his body. Acts human. He can feel Jensen’s darting glances as they pass lit shop windows in the ground-floors of towering buildings. 

“You’re wasting that face, looking moody all the time,” Jensen says lightly.

 _“Eye in six meters,”_ Jensen says inlink. It’s not necessary, Jared has the same surveillance map as Jensen, knows where all the cameras are and what angles they are capturing with their tiny rotating heads. Jared is glad to have Jensen say it, anyway. But that’s probably normal. He has all of Jensen’s files. There’s a certain connection there. 

“I’m not moody. I don’t have a reason to smile.”

“How about the fact that you can?”

Jared considers this, and finds he doesn’t have an appropriate response. There are a lot of things he can do, but that’s not how he’s programmed to act. Waste is detrimental to efficient function. 

People brush past them on the walk, most in their own world, only a few giving Jared or Jensen a second, interested glance. Jared catches sight of cyborgs mingling with the humans, conspicuous with their tattooed hands and androgynous, synthetic exteriors. One has horizontal cuts of glowing green across their cheekbones. When they turn and meet Jared’s gaze, he can see the mechanism of their vision center behind crystal irises. They don’t try to scan him, just look away.

Jensen reaches back and grabs Jared’s hand, turning and jostling him like a playful lover. What looks like a moment of shared affection on a crowded sidewalk hides them from the street cam. They turn a corner, and Jensen lets go of Jared’s hand. It’s the first physical contact they’ve made and Jared’s swimming with a unfamiliar sensation that is almost pain. Perhaps cyborgs are like magnets, and repel each other.

As the foot traffic thins, the buildings turn to newer architecture. Rising from the middle of the crowded lots the CWB compound walls stretch in solid grey, miles of closed off ground. Like the obsolete Amish sect, the CWB rejects most all forms of modern technology, growing their own food, making their own clothes and shunning human mechanization. Ironically, they use the most advanced security systems to keep the unwanted from polluting their sanctuary. For someone afraid of surveillance or death by machine, it’s the ideal refuge.

But ideal is a notion grounded in the present. Jared and Jensen are the future. 

Jensen is still giving his prefect imitation of humanness, feckless and transparent, but underneath his system is speeding up, preparing for action and Jared feels his own body in tandem.

 _I’m going to kill someone, now,_ Jared thinks, and isn’t the least bit bothered by the notion. Maybe even a little excited. It’s what he was made for, programmed for, and through his sync with Jensen, used to. 

_“Go time,”_ Ally says incom. Jensen’s right there, light as a shadow, leaping for the wall. The stone looks too smooth for purchase, but he’s already swarming up and over. Jared doesn’t even have to think before he’s right behind.

They drop the ground together, and the soil under Jared’s feet is soft with rainwater. 

_“You have about four minutes of invisibility,” Davin says. “Security at both gates . . . uh, main courtyard. I have no interior visual.”_

Shadows blink past, the open ground between the wall and the grouped buildings scattered with trees, then raised garden beds. A huge antique greenhouse, all glass and metal, gleams in the harsh security lights. 

_“Roof,”_ Jensen says. Like spiders they’re up the wall, across the roof. They locate the target’s wave pattern at the same exact moment. Second floor, east wing, across the courtyard.

 _“Target located,”_ Jared says, already turning, moving.

 _“You got about sixty seconds,”_ Ally says.

They’re around the far side of the complex, too fast to track and the speed feels good, feels right. Jared’s done this a hundred times before. There’s nothing but the target now, elimination his only goal.

It’s four storeys to the roof and Jensen drops straight to the window ledge outside the room. Jared feels an echo of the impact through his own frame. Window pane explodes and Jared drops the second Jensen’s body disappears below. 

_“Fuck. That tripped the alarm. Security will be en route.”_

The room is empty. Clothing and tech is scattered haphazardly, the bed stripped. In the middle of the bare mattress is a clear medbox, used for the short term sustainment of human organs. It’s lit up in violent read, a tangle of sensors running from it to a tablet lying nearby. 

_“Motherfucker!”_ Ally explodes incom. She’s watching through Jared’s field of vision. They’ve been tracking a wave fed through a synthetic brain. It’s really the only function a synthetic is capable of, but impossible to detect when the live wave is being transmitted remotely.

Jensen is across the room in two strides, ripping the wires free. The wave cuts off immediately, and there’s no echo when Jared scans. The target is nowhere on the premises. _“Negative,”_ Jensen says. _“Target location unknown.”_

 _“Abort,”_ Davin says. _“Lav’s diverting in fifteen seconds and counting.”_

Jensen drops the tablet. _“Copy.”_

Jared isn’t sure if he said that or if Jensen did. The space in his head has expanded.

Jensen ducks out the window, knocking a shower of glass to the ground below. When Jared follows him out Jensen is already on the roof and Jared is already on the roof and every breath Jensen is taking fills Jared’s lungs . . .

Harsh white light explodes around him. Red points are tracking them, falling too short, always too short. 

Something clips the wall, stone fragments tearing across Jared’s arm. Jensen’s arm. 

It’s Jensen all around him, deeper than the killing haze and calculated movements from sync. This is all of Jensen, nothing held back. This is how it’s supposed to be.

 

 _“Scientists are so baffled by the mystery of the brain, and perhaps this is because they are looking at the physical to explain the spiritual. Many of the mysteries we attribute to the human brain are in fact symptoms of a human soul.”_ \- Penelope Wright, Ph.D

\- 9

It’s raining. 

_“Jared.”_

The thudding, devouring rush is fading away, drawing Jared back into his own body, his own mind, steady and inexorable. There’s something pushing from the other side, forcing him out. Under the blue streetlights, Jared becomes aware of Jensen in physical space. The other cyborg is watching him, calm green eyes betraying nothing, but inlink the pressure holds steady, and Jared recognizes that, too, as Jensen. 

Jared goes reluctantly, till he can no longer sense Jensen’s movement from inside, their link just a hollow, grey echo. The loss is an ache he can’t physically locate. 

They’re near the center of the city now, moving through clusters of pedestrians. Nightlife, groups dressed up for an evening out. People in uniform getting off a late shift, the night workers just starting theirs.

The hostel Jensen leads them too has an automated check in, and Jared watches Jensen purchase a room code, then follows him up the stairs. Inside Jensen scans the small space and taps on the lights before turning to Jared. 

“What the fuck was that?” He’s still holding their link down, keeping Jared away. 

“Was what?” Jared’s mind feels cloudy, empty. Incomplete. 

“You crawled right the fuck into my head.” Jensen’s eyes are wide, his damp hair dark and flattened to his skull. “Where the hell did Ally get you?” 

The thought of putting his hand on Jensen’s hair, feeling his way back into their link spins through Jared’s mind. “NuVee,” he says, and he can hear his own tone; petulant, human.

“Is that how they make them these days?” Jensen says. He paces across the room, then back. He drops into one of the chairs.

“Did you get anything your handler was saying?”

“I can’t remember.” Jared has a perfect memory, and he can’t remember.

“The team is working to locate the target’s wave. Handlers are on their way to meet us here.” Jensen peels back his sleeve and examines his arm. Tiny dots of blood well up from the pale skin. Jared can feel the ache under his own skin, and he automatically reaches for the sensation. 

Jensen tenses. “Stop it.” 

“I can’t read you like this.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“We’re partners, though.” Jared feels at a disadvantage even though he’s the one standing. His arms and legs don’t feel the right weight, his muscles the wrong shape.

Jensen looks at him, expression oblique.

“Like that,” Jared nods.

“I hope you wear down fast.”

Jared isn’t offended, he’s fairly certain he isn’t capable of such emotion, but he doesn’t like it all the same. “Why?”

“You’re like a machine.”

Jared feels his temperature rise, some physical symptom – of what he’s not sure. It’s a human reaction and belies Jensen’s accusation even as it disrupts Jared’s system. “I am a machine. You are, too.”

Jensen tilts his head back, eyes vacant. “It’s not the same.”

Jared can guess what Jensen’s getting at, but it’s not something he can relate to. Maybe after years living around humans Jensen has come to think of himself as one, too. The very core of Jared’s consciousness tells him he’s a cyborg, even with all his human parts and human skin.

“Because you act like a human? Is that what you’re expecting from me?”

Jensen closes his eyes, sighs out a breath. “I’m not expecting anything from you.”

“Why don’t you like communicating inlink?” Jared asks, an epiphany blossoming  
Jensen twitches, pulls his damp shirt away from his body. “I’m going to take a shower. Tell me when our handlers show.”

Jared doesn’t need to tell Jensen, he’ll know as soon as they arrive, but now Jared understands. Jensen doesn’t like being reminded he’s not human. The eating, the verbal conversation, the clothes and showering – all things he does to feel human.

The soft sound of rain filters from the open washroom, and Jared stands, watching the water-diffused light pattern against the wall. Even though Jensen’s mental state could be considered a flaw, the revelation makes understanding Jensen so much simpler, and Jared is relieved. If Jensen doesn’t like Jared because he reminds him of what he is, then Jared can learn to act human, too. It wont be hard, it’s part of his programming, to blend in.

Apparently crawling into Jensen’s consciousness isn’t part of that. Jared hadn’t tried to do that, he isn’t even sure what happened. He can avoid that in the future though, an maybe Jensen wont keep pushing him out of the link. 

The shower shuts off. Something knocks against the wall and Jensen swears. When he steps into the bedroom he’s wrapped in a towel that’s sliding low over his hips, and every inch of his bare skin is gleaming wet and flawless. He scrubs a second towel over his head and throws it on the bed. “Shower dryer is broken.” He glances up at Jared. “You going to stop staring?”

Jensen’s expression is mildly annoyed but the pressure he’s been keeping on their link shivers just the slightest bit. It’s a subtlety Jared wouldn’t have caught before. Was it the mission, or does he become more sensitive to Jensen over time? It’s an idea that settles warm and solid in Jared’s mind.

Jared steps forward, then closer, into Jensen’s space. Jensen doesn’t move, but his hands are loose at his sides, ready for action. “What are you doing?”

Jared doesn’t answer. If he tries to explain, he’ll stop. He puts his hand on Jensen’s bare chest and presses back, just as much as Jensen will give. They go all the way to the mattress, and Jared braces against the bed, hands sinking into the softness of the mattress as he crawls over Jensen’s lap. There’s no reason to do what he’s doing. It’s unnecessary. It’s unreasonable. 

It feels like instinct. 

Jensen is watching him with eyes so clear they reflect Jared’s own face back. There’s no hint of machine in the intricate lines of the iris, gold shot through the green. Jared leans in and kisses him on the lips. 

Jared has nothing of his own to compare this too, no expectations to measure it against. It’s warmth against his mouth, heat and tightness shivering under his skin. He’s not confused about Jensen’s physiology. He knows beneath the smooth, pale skin it’s all machine, but if Jared was programmed to only react to a human being, then someone make a mistake in the coding, because Jared’s cock is heavy and rigid against the zipper of his jeans. The only thing on his mind is Jensen, and it feels _good,_ this connection.

When Jared pushes Jensen down on the bed, he goes without resistence. 

“I think I might be malfunctioning,” Jared says, and kisses him again. 

Jensen doesn’t move, just lets Jared lick into his mouth, suck on his lower lip. Jared knows that’s not the desired reaction in a sexual encounter, but when he spreads his thighs and sinks down to press his aching crotch against Jensen’s, the thick line of Jensen’s arousal is unmistakable through the damp towel. 

“Jensen,” Jared whispers, and maybe his chemical balance is off, maybe his brain is burning through with holes because of a major leak. Jared should care, but his whole focus is on Jensen and shape of his body through thin clothing, the soft shade of pink his skin is turning as his system increases fluid circulation and respiration. The soft white noise that’s filling their link, echos of hard, shivery, sharp _something._

Even with all his attention on Jensen, Jared can’t miss their handlers approaching from the hall. He wishes he could. When the door opens there’s a second of silence and then Davin’s voice says, “Wha’ the fuck?”

Jared slides his fingers into Jensen’s hair, rolls his hips down into the hard line of Jensen’s erection.  
“Hey, Ally, need you in here,” Davin calls.

Ally enters the room, and all of Jared’s senses are warning him to stop now, but he doesn’t, doesn’t want to stop. It feels like a mission.

“You sure your designer didn’t fuck up, give you a screwy sexborg?” Davin says.

Ally groans. “Could be too much hormone. I’ll have to check his pack.” 

Jensen’s left hand comes up, settles lightly over Jared’s hip, and Jared whimpers, the noise completely involuntary. Every one of Jensen’s fingers feels electric through Jared’s hypersensitized sensors.

“Stand down,” Ally says.

Jared wants to fight it, but at the same time he feels a kind of relief. Jensen’s hand drops away as Jared backs off him, turns to his handler.

Ally is frowning, biting her lip. “You think this is going to be a problem?”

Davin looks from Jared to Jensen, now sitting up on edge of the bed, towel unknotted, naked body on display. 

“Tactically?”

“The fucking timing of this –” Ally scrubs the heel of her hand over her forehead.

“Jensen,” Davin says. “Why were you kissing Jared?” 

For a moment Jensen doesn’t answer, just looks at his handler. There’s a wrongness in the air, a unpleasant tension that is setting off alarms in Jared. 

“He wanted sex,” Jensen says. Shrugs. And Jared knows then that Jensen’s acting; he’s lying to his handler. It echos in the emptiness of their link, intangible, but unmistakable. 

Both Ally and Davin look confused. “Is this an organic problem?” Davin says, and even though he’s still looking at Jensen, it’s obvious he’s talking to Ally.

“Pretty early for that, isn’t it?”

“I meant Jared." 

“Jesus Christ, Davin,” Ally says, voice sharp. “I sourced it myself. It’s good product. These people have contracts with all kinds serious buyers. They’re not going to make a mistake like that.” 

Davin snorts. “I’m not saying it’s defective, I’m saying you should have trimmed a whole hell of a lot more than you did. Tamper with genetics and you get adaptability and retention that are completely abnormal.”

“I’ll run diagnostics. There's probably nothing wrong, they just set each other off.”

Davin shrugs. “It’s your equipment.”

Ally sighs. “This job is all going to shit.” She looks at Jared and says, “Code,” and Jared’s knees buckle, dropping him to the floor, arms moving under his head, body curling over his folded legs, face to the floor. 

Then, nothing.

  
_You are not a body with a mind, you are a mind with a body._ – Anonymous

\- 10

He wakes.

It’s five a.m., Jared’s been aware for thirty-five hours, and gone for four. Is this what blanking is, he wonders. Empty, empty nothing. Dead space. 

He’s staring at a dusty tile floor because he can’t move his eyes, can’t move anything. There’s a tender line from his cervical to his thoracic, the edges of an incision glued closed. It’s sensation without pain.

It takes some time for Jared’s smothered mind to realize the pressure is gone from his link with Jensen. It’s open, Jensen’s presence tentative, but there, resting lightly over Jared.  
He breathes in deep, lifts his head. His power of movement is almost a surprise. 

Jensen is dressed again, sitting on the corner of the bed, elbows on his spread knees, watching Jared. 

“The handlers went out for food.” Jensen says. 

Jared nods, rolls to standing. Everything is in perfect working order, balance and reflex flawless even though it feels like he should be weak and uncoordinated. 

“Feeling a little loopy?”

Jared moves to sit beside Jensen, and the other cyborg doesn’t move away. “No. Feeling like I should be, though.”

Jensen nods. Then, after a moment: “I hate that shit.”

Jared offers a silent, profound agreement. The blank space of time is unknowable, formless and threatening. It’s not a feeling Jared can even describe, except maybe he can’t tell if he even exists outside of constant awareness. 

Jensen’s hand on his face isn’t unexpected, Jared feels it moving in and turns his head to meet it. It’s barely a whisper of sensation, fingertips brushing his jaw, ghosting over the ends of his hair. Jensen is looking at him like Jared is something he needs to decipher. Jared hopes he does.

The door swings open, the smell of pork kabobs preceding Ally and Davin’s return. Jensen doesn’t pull back, just presses his fingers into Jared’s neck, slides his thumb under Jared’s chin to tilt his head up. 

“And you say Jensen isn’t into other borgs,” Ally says.

“He’s not.”

“Sure looks like he is.” 

Jensen’s hand drops away, his examination finished and Jared is sitting still as stone, but inside there’s a shiver of something that feels like the heady, uncontrolled wave of being wrapped in Jensen’s mind. 

Ally’s earpiece lights up and she shuffles the bags of food to the table, taps her earpiece on. She listens for a moment, then says, “Davin.”

Davin taps into the conversation and neither handler says anything for a long moment. Then Davin says, “That’s the kind of kamikaze shit I don’t do.” He looks over at Ally and she shakes her head.

“How much?” Ally asks whoever they’re talking to.

A pause. 

“No,” Davin says.

“Yes,” Ally snaps. “We aren’t walking away from this. We’ll call you when we head out.” She taps her earpiece off.

“We can’t say no to an offer like this, Davin.”

“You just coded a new borg. You willing to throw that away? This is a huge fucking risk.”

“Then I’m taking it. You in or out?”

Davin sighs, wiping a hand over his forehead, down his jaw. “Okay. Okay, call Ben.”

 

\- 10.5

The team doesn’t locate Karl Atmadja’s wave pattern. In a city of any size, it’s like looking for a needle in a pile of needles. But they don’t need to. Announced in the husky contralto of VTR’s morning news anchor, Karl Atmadja is fifth on a list of speakers who will be addressing the third tri-annual Universe Federation Ethics Committee breakfast. 

_“I don’t care about a body count, but target needs to be confirmed dead,”_ Ally is saying. Jensen is hearing it too, but he doesn’t react, watching the people around them with bored disinterest. Locked in the shuttle with a crowd of morning commuters, Jared and Jensen could be anyone. Normal people with jobs to get to, or a late night to sleep off. 

_“Minimal air patrol. Cy security on ground floor.”_

The breakfast address is taking place in the glass amphitheater on the rooftop of the Helena hotel. That’s thirty-four floors from first confrontation to target location. 

The shuttle starts in on a curve, and Jensen’s body slides till his shoulder is pressing against Jared’s.

_“Lav will run interference once you’ve acquired the target.”_

No one mentions retreat routes. Thirty-four floors to the roof, fifty-two down to the bay water below. 

From the shuttle, they take a cab. The driver doesn’t look at them twice. 

A warm spark of anticipation is building in Jared’s body, and he can feel the same beat in Jensen. 

_“Stay in your own head,”_ Jensen says, and the tension is back in their link. _“There’s no room to fuck this one up.”_

The hotel doors rotate soundlessly, their footsteps echo on the marble floor. One of the flawless twenty-somethings behind the reception desk turns and smiles at them. “Welcome to the Helena,” she chirps. Across the lobby, a cyborg with white metal skin scans them, then scans again. 

_“Go time.”_

  
_Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame  
The killing and dying it was all done in vain_  
– The Green Fields of France, Irish Ballad

-11

The basics of killing never change. Jared goes for the brain. The eyes are the weakest entry point, even in a skull that could crush steel. 

The last guard Jensen grabs by the head and twists, but the spine holds, the head bent crooked, eyes flaring bright. Its hand stabs up into Jensen’s shoulder and Jared can hear something give way. Jensen twists away, drops the body, leaping over it for the elevator bank. They go straight up, crawling the inside of the shaft. Jensen is the one behind now. Jared is already scanning for the target’s wave pattern. He catches it as they reach the foyer. There are two uniformed porters at the doors leading into the amphitheater. Both are talking to their earpieces, looking equal shades of confused and alarmed. When Jared slams through the lift doors they start back, and then one screams, “Cy on roof! Repeat, cy on – ” The scream cuts off as the porter’s head explodes into red, Jensen’s hand pulverizing it against the wall. Jensen’s eyes meet Jared’s over the headless body in its blue coat. 

_“Strike on target.”_

It’s long past the point of a clean execution and now the only thing that matters is speed. Jared’s across the lawn in seconds, drawn by the constant pulse of the target he’s locked on. The tables that dot the green levels, the photographers and video cameras, the central dias with its alarmed speaker. No one will mistake him for human now, blurring between white-draped tables. Diners are rising from their chairs, confusion spreading. 

Atmadja looks up at Jared, and he’s pale under his olive tone. “I knew they’d send one of you,” he says. His left hand comes out of his pocket, clutching a small black box. If it’s a weapon he’s already too late to use it.

 _“Target acquired,”_ Jared says, and something slams into the side of his head, wrenching his whole body around. Sniper.

Uniforms boil from the far end of the amphitheater dodging through the tables. People are screaming, diving to the ground.

_tick tick tick_

Something taps the wall of Jared’s system, scrabbling over the invisible surface, looking for the shape underneath.

 _“Hack on Jared,”_ Ally says. 

Jared’s system is ringing with alarms. His frame shivers with the residual force from the bullet impact, his system flashing warning of attempted invasion.

“You had the same face when you were alive.” Atmadja’s voice is hardly more than a whisper, but it carries over the shouting and crashing around them, through the ticking inside Jared’s head.

Jared knows of six ways to kill the target in under a second. He has his arm around Atmadja’s neck, crushing the fragile veins and their load of red, but he doesn’t complete the move. There’s not reason for it, but Jared stalls, backs toward the glass wall, dragging Atmadja with him.

Davin says. _“Jensen, activate strike on target.”_

 _“Goddammit,”_ Ally snarls. _“Jared, abort.”_

 _“Jensen on track, strike in seven,”_ Davin says.

The ground under Jared’s feet vibrates with the running footfalls of the security team, so slow and heavy in their human bodies. The hack is still tap-tap-tapping away, crawling like spiders over a glass globe. 

They wont get in. They wont have time.

Atmadja chokes, gasps a long heavy breath. He’s trying to talk. “They . . .” The little black box tumbles from his hand to the green turf.

Something pierces Jared’s cloak, a needle through fabric. Then another, and another. 

It’s Jared’s own voice inside his head that announces, _“Threat critical.”_

It shouldn’t be happening, but something is numbing his system, and Jared’s eyes lock on the innocuous black box near his foot. 

“Compromised,” Jared says aloud, even though his com has gone quiet, and slams his boot down on the box, crushing it into the lawn. 

Too late. The tear keeps widening. _“Threat decisive. Commencing deconstruction,”_ Jared’s voice calmly tells him.

White smoke is rolling across the stadium, lanced through with red gunfire. Jensen’s somewhere in there. 

Jensen. Their link is still open, the pressure of Jensen holding him back still steady. _Shut it down, shut it down,_ Jared’s head screams. The probe is digging deeper, spreading paralysis. 

_“Deconstruction at one. . .”_

Jensen is there, ripping through the smoke, eyes electric green. Jared catches it in a blur before Jensen’s shoulder connects with his chest, taking them both to the ground. Bullets slam into the turf just behind them. 

Atmadja, broken free of Jared’s grip, rolls away, scrambling for cover. Jensen’s hand smooths over Jared’s chest, a second’s connection, as his head turns, following Karl Atmadja’s staggering movements through the curling smoke. Every muscle is tense, poised to move, and Jared feels Jensen start to rise, pushing off the ground to follow and eliminate the target.

 _“Deconstruction at four . . .”_ Jared’s own voice tells him. 

Jensen’s upward movement changes direction, curls into Jared. The hand splayed across Jared’s chest closes, fisting in the material of his shirt, hauling him upright with unnatural strength. 

“Not this fucking time,” Jensen hisses.

Jensen’s arm is around Jared’s waist, pinning him to Jensen’s chest. Jared’s head is full of spiders, so many tiny legs, stab-stab-stabbing into his thoughts, his senses, eating away his motor control.

Jensen’s running, pushing off the ground into a jump. Something slams into Jared’s leg. He doesn’t feel anything, just the vibration. His sensors are at zero. Two crushing thuds slam through Jensen’s body. 

They hit the stained glass mural in free fall, exploding out in a shower of colored shards.

_“Deconstruction at eight . . .”_

Jensen has one arm locked around Jared’s back, the other holding his head. Together like some unbalanced boomerang they flip over and over. Wind rips though Jared’s clothes, tries to tear his skin away. 

What the fuck did Jensen just do? Jared will be gone before they hit the water below, cold and deep, so close now.

Jared can’t think with the blades cutting into his mind, but he feels, and what he feels is, _I don’t want to die._

 _“I’ve got you,”_ Jensen says inlink. His voice settles over everything, drawing Jared in.

Jensen’s fingers are locked on Jared’s hair, Jared’s face hidden against Jensen’s neck, their legs tangled. They hit the water with a sharp crack, sending up a geyser of foam. The water closes over them, swallows them down. 

_“Deconstruct– . . .”_

END


End file.
